Identity is innate, but it is not properly nurtured. The te as the Taoists say, the virtue of the uncarved block, is denied. Some children even before any conditioning are very physical and explorative, others are more observational and quiet. Any Moms care to confirm or refute this? But because the child is male (or female) when they reach the age of identification they will be conditioned without respect to their initial nature.
What if our identity was that none of us have true identity? That none of us have a true reality that is our own? Would we be so lonely if we were to give up all temporary identities and realize that no one has any answer for us? Ok. That is very Buddhist and I respect that, but here is a fact. Even if it’s all delusion and can never be anything other than delusion, the mind is not quieted by rebuttal. The thought you fight you emphasize. The Buddha taught a process of reflection, not just saying ‘well my identity is fake and there are no answers’. Buddhism is often accused of nihilism, but it is more of an experiential engagement. If after you have done so, you find that the center cannot hold, then you still have self knowledge. But even the Buddha didn’t say the center cannot hold, he spoke of a pure light of awareness that changes the context of all the minds processes and all the objects of awareness.
Can you speak more on getting identify from the inside out? It can actually be illustrated in the recommendation of the Buddha that we contemplate death. Not that we dramatize death or that we indulge in morbid fixation, but the realization that there is a reality that is a sort of undertow to all our experience.
There are very real parts of the human mind and body, and there is a very real nature that will complete its cycle. We are not self made beings, though we are often self destructive beings in blatant defiance of any sanity or order that might have been originally the impulse for life, ours or any other. If you value life, then confronting life from your core, using what arose with you, is scary.
Practice letting go of what you absolutely cannot let go of? Oh yes, you might be forced to realize that you are really alive and that there is a reality around you. That all the teaching and conditioning is either a half truth, or as is often the case a psychotic human fiction.
I am lonely because I don’t know there is a reality around me? Yes. It is a rather broad solipsism. We are all eventually led to believe that our only existence is in our own heads. Therefore, since all we have is our senses, people get degraded to something that is again only in our heads. Most don’t see me, they see what they think I am.
So much of what we see is projection? That’s how we are taught, it isn’t the only potential.
I was wondering if having a strong self identity would prevent loneliness in all groups, then it hit me, this is why people like the Dalai Lama are at ease with everyone, and someone like the Dalai Lama gets false projections onto him all the time. Yes. It’s reported in rare cases. Mother Teresa as well.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~